Monthly Archives: November 2016

Winter holidays in America are probably the most beautiful time of the year — Christmas trees, fairy lights and festivals. The end of the year brings not only Christmas and New Year’s but other holidays as well. The Jewish holiday of Hanukkah and the African week-long celebration of Kwanzaa are also among the widely-celebrated holidays in America due to the large number of Jewish and African Americans.

“Smart home” is the term commonly used to define a residence that has appliances, air conditioning, lightning, computers, TVs, entertainment devices or security that are capable of communication with one another, can be controlled remotely or run on a schedule from any room in the home or from any location in the world by phone or Internet. Basically, it encompasses a wide range of products and devices that allow automation by the consumer.

New York State is home to the company that leads innovation in the United States: International Business Machines Corp. (IBM). In the last five years, the total number of patents issued to IBM is equal to the sum of the three next largest companies (Microsoft, Qualcomm and Google) combined!

Let’s see what impact such an organization can have on statewide innovation trends.

In this time of such a rapidly-changing environment, people with full-time office jobs and a modern lifestyle people are often exposed to high levels of stress. Nowadays anxiety is a normal part of life — everyone can be a bit nervous before an important meeting at the office or taking an exam at the university. But for a person who suffers from an anxiety disorder, things are different; this person feels anxiety all the time, and it doesn’t go away.

What is cloud computing and why is it important? In recent years, there has been a surge in the number of Internet-based services that provide shared computer resources, minimizing both upfront and maintenance costs for new projects. It is usually regarded as most useful for smaller setups, as it allows access to a significant amount of resources regardless of the project size.

Despite being technically present since the 1990s, the technology only really took off in 2009 (Microsoft announced its Azure service in October 2008). After this, it didn’t take long for major U.S. companies to start patenting their developments.

In 2014 the United States led the world in organic food revenue, generating over €27 billion according to Statista.com. Germany had the second-largest market, with organic food sales amounting to approximately €7.9 billion. Third-place France produced around €4.8 billion.

The number of utility patents issued to the U.S. universities is relatively small: around 4 percent. Nevertheless, it is still interesting to see what the universities are patenting — it’s definitely the right place to look for bleeding-edge technology.

According to information published by the United States Environmental Protection Agency, American people generated about 254 million tons of trash and recycled around 87 million tons of material in 2013. In terms of actively recycling and composting waste, the United States falls far behind other countries. The U.S. recycles about 35 percent of all its municipal waste. Germany leads the world in this regard, composting or recycling 65 percent of all its municipal waste. South Korea takes second place with a recycling rate of 59 percent.

Have you ever seen “Quality of Life” comparisons between different countries? There are many ways to measure such things (some involving much more guesswork than the others). Among the most prominent is the Economist’s Where-to-be-born index, which we have thoroughly discussed in previous posts.

There are many fewer studies on how the quality of life differs between the states in our country. Moreover, this is not an empty question: California alone could be the fifth-largest economy in the world. Wouldn’t it be logical to assume that life in North Dakota may be somewhat different?

In the minds of most people, the American auto industry is synonymous with the Midwest (Detroit in particular). After having been left for dead many times since the 1970s, the Midwest still conjures up images of American heavy industry and assembly lines churning out cars. Indeed, the Motor City continues to be a major hub of automobile production in America, and heavy industry is still alive and well in parts of the Midwest.